General Information

Serial #

N/A

Part Number

1

Total Parts

2

AKA

N/A

Patents

N/A

General Description

Synthetic casing and buttons with metal parts.

Dimensions

Note: These reflect the general size for storage and are not necessarily representative of the object's true dimensions.

Length

16.0 cm

Width

5.6 cm

Height

2.8 cm

Thickness

N/A

Weight

N/A

Diameter

N/A

Volume

N/A

Lexicon

Group

Communications

Category

Radio

Sub-Category

N/A

Manufacturer

AKA

Unknown

Country

Unknown

State/Province

Unknown

City

Unknown

Context

Country

Canada

State/Province

Ontario

Period

ca. late 1990s

Canada

Bell Northern Research, was the research and development subsidiary of Northern Telecom (later Nortel Networks) and Bell Canada. It was built by Northern Telecom at its Trans-Canada plant in Montreal. Northern Telecom and its predecessor, Northern Electric, was for decades Canada’s largest manufacturer of telecommunications equipment. Originally a subsidiary of the AT&T-owned Western Electric, for which it manufactured American-designed products for the Canadian market, Northern Electric became Canadian-owned in the 1950s and in the 1960s began to design and produce equipment to meet the distinctive needs of Canadian telecommunication companies. In the 1970s, through its new research subsidiary, Bell Northern Research, the company made a concerted shift from conventional analogue equipment into the emerging field of digital communications, becoming in the 1980s the first equipment supplier to provide a complete line of fully digital switching and transmission gear. During this decade the company moved aggressively into export markets, and opened manufacturing and R&D operations in several countries. The company’s sales soared during the internet boom of the 1990s, but a combination of poor financial decisions and a failure to maintain its technological edge led eventually to its bankruptcy in 2009. One of the core elements of the Nothern Telecom (later Nortel) was the Industrial Design group headed by John Tyson. This group was responsible for the design of Northern Telecom products and interfaces. The Contempra phone was the first consumer product developed by the Industrial Design group. Later consumer telephone designs followed were based on how and where the consumers would use these telephones (Imagination series). The PCS 1920 and 1930 were the consumer versions built from Northern Telecom Orbitor prototype.

Function

To send and receive voice and data signals via a digital cellular radio network.

Technical

The Nortel PCS 1920 featured an advanced acoustic system which included voice recognition and commands as well as seamless movement between headset and speaker phone. The phone was designed to allow the speaker phone and the earpiece to share the same speaker but the functionality between handset and speaker phone was not manually activated but an optic sensor integrated in the body of the phone could determine in the phone was at the ear or away – turning on and off the speaker phone functions. The acoustic cavity design and components were perfected through work by the Acoustic Design group.

Area Notes

Unknown

Details

Markings

Printed on the casing on the proper front and back: "NORTEL"/ "NORTEL/ NORTHERN TELECOM"/

Missing

Appears complete

Finish

Predominantly red synthetic radiotelephone with black buttons and white and grey lettering on the proper front. When the battery is removed, the proper back is silver-coloured metal and black synthetic with white labels printed with black text.

Decoration

N/A